Saturday, January 16, 2010

Two years too early/late

If there's even been a movie that's cried out for a gimmicky release date, it's Leap Year.

Yet when the film came out last Friday -- making only $9.2 million while fighting for air among the big year-end releases -- it was either two years too early, or two years too late.

With such an apparently interchangeable romantic comedy/travelogue plot, couldn't it have afforded to sit on the shelf for two more years? Or, I should say, wait two years to start filming?

If the production had begun two years earlier, that would have really been something. February 29th was a Friday in 2008. The last time that happened was in 1980, and the next won't be until 2036. Leap Year missed a golden opportunity to come out on Friday, February 29, 2008. The horror, the horror.

But even 2012 would have been okay for it. The 29th falls on a Wednesday that year, and that's the second most popular day of the week for releasing a film.

I contend that not only was the marketing not helped, but actually crippled by this film coming out in 2010. There's a mental disconnect, I think, about a movie called Leap Year coming out in a non-leap year. People just aren't thinking about February 29th in the year 2010. It would be kind of like Disney's A Christmas Carol coming out in June, or the Gary Marshall rom-com Valentine's Day hitting theaters in October instead of next month.

Welcome to the Audient.

I'm a film critic, currently writing for the Australian film website ReelGood (www.reelgood.com.au). This blog is not reviews per se, but rather, observations about trends in movies as well as some commentary about the quality of the films themselves. But let's be honest -- more than anything it's about me telling you about my own personal viewing habits/anecdotes. Why? As a father of two, I sometimes need to churn this stuff out quickly!